Marine Cpl. Luis Torres wants to forget his experiences on the front lines of Iraq, while Army Sgt. John Villanueva takes the heat and improvised explosive devices in stride.

With violence increasing in Iraq, the two Anaheim residents returned home this month and discussed their experiences.

Torres finished his tour in Iraq and wants to forget about the war. Army reservist Villanueva still has five more months to serve in Iraq, where he’s a truck driver.

After seeing 22 comrades die in Iraq, Luis Torres is just glad to be home

Marine Cpl. Luis Torres doesn’t consider himself a hero – despite the fact that he volunteered to go to Iraq in place of a friend whose wife was pregnant.

Not heroism, says the 21-year-old Torres: “I just saw it as my duty.”

Torres spent seven months in Iraq helping fortify Marine bases and positions west of Baghdad. Off base, Torres and his fellow Marines ate bags of dried food that they mixed with water, and with no toilets available they burned bags of waste.

“There was nothing really civilized out there,” he said.

During a mission near Fallujah, a mortar exploded nearby, killing 22 fellow Marines.

He said that he feels the lives of many Iraqis are improving, but that the insurgents have developed a new and desperate style of guerrilla warfare.

“I feel more mature than kids my age because I’ve been through a lot more,” he said. “I’ve lost friends and seen different aspects of life.”

Now that Torres is home, he sums up life in Orange County with one word: privilege.

“You go from the worst ever and a month later you are looking at the beach, eating El Torito,” Torres said. “It’s a trip on your mind.”

Torres came home to Anaheim Hills two weeks ago. He attended Canyon High School before entering the Marines.

“It was the greatest experience,” Torres said of his reunion with family and friends. “I shed some tears. Watching everyone was such a relief.”

However, even back at home Torres said he can’t forget. “Relax, relax, relax, you’re back home,” Torres said he told himself. “Nothing is going to hurt you. You are fine.”

Torres has 10 more months in the Marines that he hopes to spend at Camp Pendleton, unless tensions with North Korea send him across the Pacific Ocean. After the Marines, he hopes either to go to a police academy or become a history teacher.

“Thank God I’m home,” Torres said.

Despite the violence, Villanueva likes to think about the war and its implications

Despite the IEDs and RPGs exploding around him, Army reservist John Villanueva stays positive.

“There is a lot of joking around among the squad mates,” said Sgt. Villanueva, 27. “But the driving separates the men from the boys.”

One of his primary jobs is to find “improvised explosive devices” and dodge the “rocket-propelled grenades” hidden along on the road. At the beginning of his tour – eight months ago – his convoys were rarely hit, but these days he said he expects an attack during most missions.

“It’s crazy,” Villanueva said. “I don’t know how they are going to fix it …; there is more violence compared to when I first got here, especially in Baghdad.”

He said the increased violence doesn’t scare him but makes him more aware: “Sometimes, you see two or three (IEDs) in one night and it is not fun. Of course, we laugh about it …; when everyone is talking, it keeps you alert.”

On Oct. 19, he was given a two-week leave to visit family and friends in Anaheim.

“It feels like a vacation,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like home because I know I am going to be going back.”

In between watching the World Series and celebrating his birthday, he went to Disneyland and took a trip San Francisco. He also saw the new Clint Eastwood World War II movie, “Flags of our Fathers.”

“Some just want their mind away from the war (on their leave),” he said. “But I like it. That is my area of interest. I am a political science minor, and it shows that whatever happens there affects everything else.”

Villanueva leaves next Saturday to begin the 48-hour process of returning to Iraq.

After his Iraq tour is over in five months, Villanueva, who went to high school in the Philippines and graduated from UC Irvine, wants to start law school.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.